A Note To Beginners: Your Discomfort Means You’re On The Right Path

You’re wondering if you’re smart enough — talented enough — to make this career change into web development. You try hard for a week and then your motivation finally takes a nosedive when you can’t get your code to work.

You can’t wait until you’re confident in your skills and feel equipped to tackle any problem.

Let me tell you something.

It will never feel like that.

Part of the job is learning to be OK with feeling ill-equipped, underprepared, and like you’re just barely scraping by. It’s called impostor syndrome, and we all have it.

In this field, there’s so much to remember and things are amorphous and ever-changing, and The Right Way™ is up to interpretation.

You’ll grow the most when you’re wedged in that uncomfortable spot where ‘what you know’ juts right up against ‘what you don’t know.’

So don’t stick with what’s comfortable.

Don’t avoid a certain popular technology because, in your opinion, it’s a nightmare to work with.

That probably means you haven’t worked with it enough. You haven’t gotten to know it well enough to appreciate its quirks, nuances, and special powers.

(Hey you!Yeah you! I know you want to just give up on understanding CSS! And that vanilla Javascript scares the bejeezus out of you. Keep on trying.)

Never stop learning, and you’ll never stop exceeding your own self-imposed limitations.

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Lupe Camacho is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

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